Sometimes I get a reader comment which merits a full post in response. Such is the case with two comments (and later, a third) submitted by reader “bw1” to last week’s cupcake post, “A Passionate Dad Defends the In-Class Birthday Treat, and I Respond.”
In essence, bw1 feels it’s my job to instill in my children the willpower to resist classroom treats rather than asking the school to remove those treats. And bw1 is not the first reader to make this argument. Right after I started this blog, a “libertarian” mom wrote in response to my post “Outing Myself” (wherein I lamented my hypocrisy for hating the in-class birthday treat but bringing them nonetheless):
Personally, I aim to be the kind of mother who speaks with authority and raises children who listen. Asking my legislators to assist me, because I don’t want to be the “mean” parent, seems terribly weak.
Before I address the “backbone” argument, let me first reprint the first two of bw1’s comments here. (For clarity, where bw1 is quoting text written by me, I use italics):
“But my question to him is, is there a legitimate reason why some parents no longer want their kids eating a cupcake at school every time a classmate has a birthday…. ?”
Interesting question, but completely irrelevant. If you don’t want your kid eating those cupcakes, then it’s YOUR JOB as a parent to instill that in your kid. It’s not the rest of the world’s job to eliminate opportunities for your kid to sin against your wishes.
Let’s look at the “no longer” part, as if the concerns of some new-age anti-sugar parents represent some new an novel issue never see before, which can’t possibly be addressed within the context of liberty known in past generations. I have news for you, it’s nothing new. I spent my entire K-12 career knowing that, during Lent, I was not to eat meat on Fridays, and although numerous opportunities presented themselves at school, from lunch trading to cafeteria offerings, etc. my parents managed to somehow teach me priorities such that I abstained. Similarly, my Jewish classmates never availed themselves of all the traife that was available.
What astounds me is the conceit with which you assume the rest of society must be constrained to protect your children from any temptation to deviate from your dietary beliefs. What makes you think the public schools should serve as your personal food inquisition?
Then bw1 checked out my earlier post, “The Birthday Cupcake Debate Heats Up,” and added this comment:
Just took a look at one of the other posts that you said addressed these concerns, and your logic there wasn’t any more impressive:
“To me, cupcakes in school are a lot like second-hand smoke.”
Because abstaining from an available cupcake is as deadly as not breathing, right?
But why should I be put in the position of asking that of a seven year old, glassy-eyed with envy as 24 of his peers sit around him, licking cupcake frosting off their fingers?”
BECAUSE:
1.- as you approvingly quoted, “. . . if you go with the flow in America today, you will end up overweight or obese.” Thus, the ONLY HOPE your child has for a non-obese life is learning to resist peer pressure and that it is possible to survive being the odd man out.
2.- Just saying no to the cupcake lays the groundwork for just saying no to the cigarette, and later the joint, that your child WILL be offered at some point in his school career.
3.- maybe you might want your kid to develop some character and backbone to do what’s right.
4.-in 8 years or so, you’re going to want your kid to be able to resist something FAR more tempting than a cupcake, which many of his peers are enjoying, so that you don’t end up a premature grandmother.Newsflash – a sizable number of the world’s religions involve dietary restrictions that fall outside the secular American mainstream. MILLIONS of parents whose faith placed them in the position of not just asking, but demanding under pain of grounding or even corporal punishment, that their grade school children abstain from what others are enjoying, have still raised well adjusted kids who’ve gone on to be productive, contributing members of society.
Similarly, this is nothing more than you wanting your kid to conform to your beliefs. Sorry, but that’s no more society’s job than teaching them to say a rosary.
Here’s my response to bw1 and other readers who share the same views:
Thanks for your comments on these posts. Without oversimplifying, I think I can fairly boil down both comments to two key ideas:
- It’s my job — and mine alone — to teach my child to resist the cupcake, and it’s “not the rest of the world’s job to eliminate opportunities [my] kid to sin* against [my] wishes.”
- It’s ridiculous for me to compare a cupcake to second-hand smoke; only “some new-age anti-sugar parent” could possibly care about an innocuous cupcake.
Assuming that’s a fair recap, let’s take each point in turn.
Don’t Remove Temptation – Instill Backbone
I wholeheartedly agree that it’s my job as a parent to instill in my child whatever values he’ll need to resist the many temptations life will throw in his path. You mention several of these as examples: junk food, cigarettes, drugs/alcohol and unprotected sex.
However, it’s quite notable that with respect to every one of the public health concerns you hold up as examples, schools are already serving as active partners to assist parents in their efforts. Almost every public school district in America, through its health/hygiene curriculum, tries to inculcate students with anti-smoking and anti-drug/alcohol messages, offers a modicum of nutrition education, provides mandatory physical education and promotes either abstinence alone or provides sex education with an underlying abstinence message.
That this health education is taking place at all points up the rather obvious fact that the school environment is not the equivalent of the world at large. Outside the school walls, the world is very much a free-for-all and children will certainly need plenty of “backbone” to navigate it safely. But inside the schoolhouse, society quite deliberately picks and chooses which messages it wishes to convey to its children and the values it hopes to instill.
Were that not the case, following your manner of thinking to its (admittedly absurd but perfectly logical) extreme, what would be wrong with teachers handing out cigarettes, drugs, pornography, weapons etc. in the classroom and trusting that each parent had done a good enough job at home to teach children to resist? What would be wrong with a teacher indoctrinating children to commit acts of terror, if parents had instilled sufficient “backbone” in their children to reject those messages?
We are concerned about what happens in the classroom because our children are quite literally captive to all that takes place there for the majority of their waking hours during the most formative years of their lives. We care very much about what is taught, and about who is teaching it, and, yes, even what food is made available there, because we know that young children, despite all the best efforts expended at home, are inherently impressionable and do not always have the “backbone” to act as we hope in the face of powerful teacher influence, peer pressure and primitive bodily urges (like the desire to eat a cupcake).
Now, as already noted, it’s patently absurd to compare offering a child a birthday cupcake to encouraging him to blow up a building. But this leads to the second of your two arguments.
Is That Little Cupcake Really Worthy of Concern?
In your comment, you imply that only the “new age, anti-sugar parent” could care about a cupcake in the first place. But sadly, bw1, it’s not my kooky “new-age” thinking that’s necessitating larger school desks to accommodate overweight and obese children. (Really, could any development be more emblematic of the problem at hand?) We are in the midst of an alarming and well-documented public health crisis, one that affects one-third of our children and two-thirds of our adults, that weakens our economy and our national security — and which will almost certainly cause the premature death of a large swath of this generation of Americans.
And it’s a crisis that simply did not exist while you were admirably exercising your firm backbone, avoiding meat on Fridays back in the day. Something categorically different is going on in today’s schools, a seismic shift that affects all children, not just those few with a religiously-restricted diet (and not even just those who are overweight, as a steady diet of junk food has adverse health effects other than obesity).
In the face of draconian budget cuts, many cash-strapped schools around the country currently: rely on daily fast food and junk food fundraisers (at some Houston ISD high schools, there is a veritable “food court” set up each day by student and parent groups selling fast food); operate junk-food-stocked school stores to fund extracurricular activities; advertise sugary cereal and junk food on the sides of school buses; offer foods like fried chip nachos and bright blue slushies in their own cafeterias as so-called “competitive food” to drive profits; let corporations selling junk food co-opt the educational process and infiltrate the halls, classrooms and sports fields with their advertising; and sell off their “pouring rights” to the highest beverage company bidder. And even apart from the financial incentives to offer junk food, there are still the well-meaning teachers who offer candy as a reward for good behavior or correct answers, and, yes, there is this custom of allowing sugary birthday treats, which in a crowded classroom (again, budget cuts) can mean that 1/6 of the school year = Cupcake Day.
I suppose you will say that even in a junk-food-rich school environment like this, we must still demand “backbone” from our kids. But why on earth should we have to do that? Why can’t our schools be a trusted ally in raising the next generation well, rather than yet one more battleground for parents already outmatched by the almost two billion dollars a year in the direct advertising of junk food advertising to their children; by a fast food outlet on every corner; by highly processed food, chemically engineered as never before to make every synapse fire in delight; by the dance teacher, soccer coach or even fellow soccer mom who “fuels up” our little athletes with Oreos and Capri Sun; and by a host of other obstacles which I can assure you your own parents didn’t have to contend with?
Finally, I’d like to turn to my original post in which I compared the serving of a cupcake to my child without my consent to exposing him to second-hand smoke. I wrote there:
To me, cupcakes in school are a lot like second-hand smoke. Sure, you have the right to light up a cigarette at will, but you don’t have the right to do it in an elevator where I have no means of escape. Similarly, when my kid is sitting in school he’s entirely captive to what goes on there. And when you bring your two dozen cupcakes to class, you might be inadvertently violating all sorts of things I care about with respect to my child and how I choose to raise him.
You’ve needled me a bit in your comment by writing with sarcasm:
Because abstaining from an available cupcake is as deadly as not breathing, right?
But that’s not quite fair, is it, bw1? Because you conveniently omitted my own qualification to the second-hand smoke analogy contained in that same post:
Now, I can already hear you saying two things. One, a cupcake isn’t a deadly agent like cigarette smoke. That’s certainly true and I like a good cupcake as much as anybody – maybe more. But lately . . . I feel like I just don’t have the luxury of viewing any individual treat in a vacuum anymore. . . . [I]n today’s world, is a cupcake just a cupcake? Or do we have to view it in the context of an American child’s entire lifestyle, which is likely to be relatively sedentary, rich in highly processed, sugary, salty and fatty foods, with frequent, unnecessary snacking and all the rest?
As everything I’ve just laid out illustrates, there has been such a radical shift in the food environment of today’s children that, as one TLT commenter, Traceh, so succinctly put it, it is “NEVER just one cupcake” anymore.
Thanks for reading TLT and commenting on the blog. If you wish to reply, we can continue the discussion in the comments section of this post.
_______
* = bw1’s use of “sin” in this context is intriguing. I can assure him/her that my opposition to junk food in schools is neither a religious nor moral crusade, but simply borne out of concern for children’s health.
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Casey says
I see this with the AAP’s recommendation to avoid using food as a reward. The reason they make recommendations is because there are differing opinions. Parents are welcome to disregard them in their homes, but they should not force other parents to have those messages undermined at school if they want their children to follow the AAP’s recommendation not to use food as a reward. As to developing will power to resist peer pressure, there are plenty of opportunities for this outside of school. Children see school as an authority figure so messages from teachers and administrators about health should be consistent with AAP recommendations.
Bri says
I’d like to add one more thing here, which seems to get glossed over by almost everyone on the pro-cupcake/pro-junk side of this debate, both here on TLT and elsewhere.
The argument that abstaining from meat on Fridays is the same as abstaining from a cupcake is a false argument. Cupcake = meat? Not quite. Here’s the thing:
1) A school that provides a meat-based meal, or a meal containing meat and dairy mixed, or any other possible permutation that violates the religious dietary prescriptions of a particular group, is not providing that meal unnecessarily. In other words, that meat-based meal on Friday was chosen because it was thought to be nutritionally valuable (we’ll quibble about the actual value of school lunch meats later). The meat meal IS the fuel for the majority of the children in that case. The cupcake? Not fuel. Not chosen because it’s purportedly valuable to the children. Not, in short, good for ANYONE. It’s gravy. And you may like that gravy, you may think it’s delightful, but removing it is not going to harm anyone — and may in fact do good things for many. On the other hand, removing the meal? Probably not as good a choice.
2) Most schools have provided a meatless lunch on Fridays since the 1960s, for crying out loud. Even if it’s not the main choice, it’s almost always an option, even in public schools, especially in today’s world where pizza is available every stinking day. You want to seriously tell me that telling a kid he has to choose the PIZZA instead of the chili dog because it’s Friday is tantamount to telling him to abstain from a birthday cupcake? Again, false analogy. There’s no equally appealing alternative to the cupcake.
3) If “THE ONLY” way to come out of childhood not being obese is to be strong-willed enough to abstain from the cupcake…then aren’t we allowing our schools to do harm to our children? When we allow them to act in loco parentiis, there is an implication that they will do only what is in our children’s best interests. Allowing a constant barrage of junk is not in anyone’s best interests, and if this reader really thinks that partaking of all the junk will lead to an inevitable decline into obesity, then why SHOULDN’T we be demanding that the schools do better as actors on our behalf? It’s not because we’re lazy parents; it’s because we send our kids to school expecting that the school will care for our children as competently as we care for them. And if the school fails in that regard, in any way, it should be held accountable, even if the packaging of that failure is as attractive as a cupcake.
EdT. says
I will second the “schools have been providing ‘no-meat’ options on Fridays” – at least during Lent. I remember “fish for Friday” at the school cafeteria back when I was a student in HISD (during the 1960s.)
~EdT.
Traceh says
I think the crux of the pro-junk food argument is A) we had it when were were kids and we’re fine now (really? Are you disease free, pain free, and a healthy weight?), and B) no one has the right to tell me what not to eat. C) It’s not the school’s responsibility to teach kids healthy eating habits/or to resist peer pressure. Am I wrong?
So for nostalgia’s sake, many things have changed since we were kids. Time to grow up and deal with the current situation. Some of the things I did as a kid would NEVER be allowed with my kids. I’m actually surprised I wasn’t raped, molested, run over by a car, drooped 12 feet from a hay loft, cut myself on a turbine, gotten bit by a rattle snake, started smoking, doing drugs. Our country’s idea of parenting has changed drastically in the past 20, 30, 40, 50 years. If you’re nostalgic, why not argue for teachers spanking your kids in class like they used to? Or for standing with your nose in the corner. Nostalgia is not a valid argument for this. Times change, for many reasons. Time to realize it’s a new decade and we are facing new and varied challenges as parents.
As to these people claiming “new-aged” anti sugar parents can’t tell me what to do, well guess what? By insisting on having cupcakes, you’re telling ME what to do. You’re telling me that I have no rights to challenge the system to improve not just my kids health and attitude, but yours as well. I mean really, what are the kids LEARNING with all these treats? If the school give it to them, it must be ok, right? School is a trusted authority to them. School needs to be a player in changing the emotion and thought behind food.
Which brings me to C), it’s not the school’s responsibility. No, not solely. It takes a village. My kids are at school almost half of their waking hours. Are you telling me the school should bear no responsibility in teaching something as valuable as health and wellness? Don’t schools help teach kids impulse control, social skills, teamwork, sharing, taking turns, etc? While I work hard to teach my kids this, it helps that the school reinforces it. I view my kids teachers as my partners in helping them learn and grow. Schools should also practice what they preach and model good choices by pr0viding good choices and reducing access to bad ones.
Alissa says
What frustrated me about bw1’s insistence that resisting the cupcake is no different than kids resisting non-kosher foods is that those foods are generally not brought into school and distributed to every kid in the class. And as for comparing cupcakes in the classroom to resisting cigarettes, drugs, sex, etc. later in life is that those will not be explicitly encouraged by teachers and parents in an educational setting. I would hope this parent would be up in arms if a parent brought cigarettes in for every kid in the class and expected that kids would say no if they were taught well by their parents, or if the teacher organized a game of spin the bottle. We are not talking about resisting peer pressure, we are talking about resisting ADULT pressure, in an environment that is supposed to be safe.
Michele Hays @QuipsTravails says
I am so, so tired of the “just say no” argument. We don’t expect the same kind of self-control in kids that we do in adults – for this reason, even non-prescription medication has to go through the school nurse, right? Yes, it’s a parent’s responsibility to TEACH self-control, but the assumption that kids should have mastered it by school-age is more than a little silly.
I still would like to find some kind of middle ground with classroom treats, but clearly we are somehow stuck between all or nothing – in which case, I think no treats is a better choice. Institutions of learning are not daycare facilities, and are not responsible for providing a free birthday party venue at taxpayer’s expense.
Chris says
Cupcakes are not the same as when we were kids and had moms that stayed at home (mine did) and made homemade goodies.. now most of the cupcakes come from the store where they use the cheapest possible ingredients and cover it with every possible color!! My grrls did very well using their backbone over Valentine’s Day thank you vey much- my 8 yo tried a bite of everything there- and she said the only thing she considered edible was the powdered donuts (spelled that way for a reason)- 5 other things she called *crap* on!! While I kind of wished she had just skipped the stuff altogether- I think an even bigger lesson was learned- about looks and taste- and we have fed them such quality food that they don’t like school food or prepackaged treats!!!
My children are given treats for being good in class, on the school bus?!! and PE is taken away for bad behavior..
I wanted to homeschool- it doesn’t work for us- so I have no option but to hope the school does at least a passable job during the time they have my grrls.. we have changed schools this is so important- this required the whole family to MOVE!!! My grrls’ health is the most important thing they can develop during this time- I know- as I lost mine- to bad nutrition made by eating the way the gov’t recommended!!!
Liz - Meal Makeover Mom says
Our schools should role model the “ideal” when it comes to many aspects of life: good behavior, community service, kindness, high academic standards, physical fitness, respect, good nutrition. Do you see where I’m going with this?
We don’t teach kids from comic strips, we use textbooks. And communities spend a lot of time deciding which textbooks and academic programs to follow. Let’s give food and nutrition that same sort of attention and serve kids the best foods possible. Cupcakes have a place and that place is in the home. Instead of wasting classroom time eating cupcakes, why not take the 15 minutes kids might sit down to gobble them up and use it for outdoor play time instead. And while we’re at it, let’s make phys ed classes available daily to every kid in this country. Those changes could have a positive impact on our kids’ health … and there’s nothing controversial about that as far as I’m concerned.
Kate says
Regarding the religious comments…depending on one where lives, that isn’t just a “few” kids being who do not to eat meat on Fridays. Some schools are more accommodating of this issues, others are not.
Some children have always had dietary restrictions, for what ever reason. Maybe it was a health condition, maybe it was for religious reasons. My own sister had dietary restrictions when she was a child…not sure if they were all based in hard science or not, but I digress. My parents would have never thought it was the school’s job to restrict what others may or may not be able to eat, based on my sister’s needs.
bw1 says
Kate gets it. It’s about freedom and expecting the government to make everyone accommodate your personal preferences, REGARDLESS of the basis for those preferences.
Uly says
Like expecting the schools to accommodate your preference for 24 days of lost class time and cupcakes?
LG says
I am curious if bw1 has school-age children…I have noticed that people who play down this issue are, in fact, not actually facing this immediate problem because their kids are very young. These parents aren’t in school lunchrooms or classrooms to really watch how this situation plays out. Even my background in child nutrition and counseling kids about making healthy food choices STILL doesn’t give my own children the ‘backbone’ to say no when offered grossly unhealthy treats. Sure they do better than the average child ‘resisting’ but they are not little adults with strong willpower or the ability to make decisions based on long-term consequences (“I’m going to say no because this could make me overweight or lead to Type 2 Diabetes”). Expecting more than that is unrealistic and idealistic.
Thank you for another excellent rational post Bettina. You come up with the words to express how many of us parents feel.
Justin says
A very well-thought-out response. I think a lot of people (myself included until very recently) don’t realize that the increased volume of junk food in schools is really what’s at issue–not so much the “occasional cupcake.”
I still ask, though, where do you draw the line on moderation? I’ve never been a big fan of the “all or nothing” approach for reasons I and others posted previously. Where do you draw the line and which treats deserve to be on the chopping block? I’d wager to say if you asked 10 parents, you’d get close to 10 different answers.
Personally, I’d say you get more educational bang for your buck worrying about the everyday stuff (vending machines, school stores, a-la-carte in the cafeteria, school-provided snacktime treats, M&M’s for right answers, fast food for reading books, and so on). If those things got straightened-out, then maybe the birthday cupcake doesn’t have to go away completely, too. Maybe you can have the “once a month/quarter birthday for all” thing and feel better about it.
Why? Because then it actually *is* a treat and not part of an endless stream of other junk they have offered to them on a daily basis.
Casey says
This has been my approach living in the South where the attitude seems to be “you’ll have to pry the cupcake out of my cold, dead fingers.” I’ve been advocating for stronger wellness policies that address not using food as a reward, healthier celebrations (by balancing the treats with healthy options), and healthier fundraising. I also use my children’s love of reading as a reward and give them a gift certificate to our local bookstore every time they say no thank you to a class treat or food reward.
Sally says
I’m just not convinced that treats need to equal food. There are plenty of other ways to celebrate a special day in school without food being involved. How about bringing your favorite book to school to read out loud in class or some other such thing. We currently choose not to bring food treats for birthdays, but substitute pencils, bouncy balls, erasers, etc.
It is funny to me that people who want to get the junk food out of schools are equated with being party poopers … most of want fun to be had, but not at the expense of our children’s health.
Kate says
I guess the problem I have with never expecting our children to have to say no argument because of food restrictions or dietary preferences…is that it means that you can never have any possibly meaningful food related activity in the classroom, because there is always the potential, whether it might be a cupcake or a strawberry…that one child can’t participate.
How long do we have this line of thinking? Do we have it with junior high age kids…that means that we’d probably need to really limit what might go on in a intro home ec class.
Chris says
if only they had home ec..
our school is K-8 and has a gorgeous kitchen/ teaching room- that sits unused!!!!! because there isn’t enough room in the budget for a *frivolous* course like home ec!!! Considering it unimportant is why no one can cook now and everyone eats fast food all the time and is fat!!!(slight exaggeration there I know 😉
Justin says
It’s not THAT much of an exaggeration, nor is it far-reaching in terms of being part of a more holistic solution.
The fact is that anywhere from 1 to 2 generations ago, we stopped valuing Home Ec. “topics” in the household. Kids (well, mostly girls), were taught to cook simply by cooking with Mom or observing how it was done. Meal times at the table were important to families. Kids did chores–everything from laundry to sweeping, to taking out the garbage and maybe even helped with some light cooking. So when they became adults, they knew how to do the most basic things.
Today, we’re a different society–for better or for worse. The modern family dashes around during the evenings from activity to activity. We don’t place a big enough value on mealtimes and many of us grew up on “convenience foods.” When I was in college, I met Freshmen who didn’t even know how to run a washing machine, let alone boil water. They used to save up two months of laundry and let Mom take it home.
To that point, I think Home Ec as a class (or something comparable) is now more relevant than it ever was. My own middle school Home Ec class included basic skills necessary to follow a recipe, simple sewing, etc. Even if we brought back just the cooking and nutrition portion of it and made it mandatory for graduation or even part of health class, imagine how that would impact the next generation of parents.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Kate: I agree there’s an age at which we can expect kids to exercise their own judgment, bolstered by messages at home, though I still object at any grade level to the infiltration in schools of Big Food corporate interests, the sale of junk by the school itself, etc.
That said, you have cited here a few times the need for “food-related activities” in the classroom, but in my experience as a parent (so far) these seem to me to be so few and far between, and never actually pedagogically necessary. As I mentioned in this comment thread with the “blood stream” experiment, I was livid that my kids were being given cups of corn syrup riddled with little candies as a way to learn about human biology, when the lesson could have been taught just as vividly without food. And yes, it’s instructive for kids to hold their noses while eating something to learn about the role of smell in taste but if it’s necessary to teach that, let the kids each bring in a piece of food from home. I guess I’ve come to feel (and believe me, this is a real evolution for me) that food is so charged these days for so many reasons that it just seems easier to make the class a food-free zone (or each kid eating his/her own food, but not food provided by others).
That said, I do very much appreciate the cultural aspects of food and the lessons to be learned there. That’s why I adore our school’s international festival which every year features booths from 40-50 countries, staffed by parents in our very international student body. But that takes place after school and kids attend with their parents, so that if there are any parental concerns, there can also be oversight.
I guess that’s what it really comes down to for me – that when a teacher or parent feeds my kids without my knowledge, it robs me of oversight to which I think I’m perfectly entitled, at least when the kids are young. Most of the time, I throw up my hands and say, whatever, it’s just a cookie or Hershey’s kiss. But when it starts to really add up, or where it begins to interfere with my OWN feeding of my kids (sugar-overload at school = mean mommy at home who denies treats), then I start to get really ticked off. And these concerns of course pale in comparison to the parents of food allergic kids who can be put at real risk by the well-meaning feeding of others.
Kate says
I saw your other post about the fake blood, and commented about it. Our experience with that activity was that it was not be consumed, and I’m not sure anyone wanted to. I think it would be fair to say that such an activity wouldn’t be pedagogically necessary as it isn’t necessarily demonstrating anything about the properties of the materials used, except that the corn syrup is viscous in the same way blood is.
As to your few and far between comment…I’m not sure that the frequency of an activity determines its’ worth.
That being said, I’d hope that our teachers have a voice in what is pedagogically necessary…and that they exercise good sense in doing so. I guess I’m a nerd….google helped me find an experiment with red cabbage that I’m seriously tempted to try myself. Maybe others don’t find the same enjoyment in hands on learning.
My thought in posting about the school related activities is that I think the climate of fear we have surrounding food concerns me. I do understand the obesity concerns, but to say that food has no place in the classroom because of fear related to allergies…I just can’t get behind that. How far will people take that? Would we not do an experiment with the effect of sugar and salt on water solutions as they are affected by temperature because we are afraid little Johnny might have his very first experience with straight sugar, eat it, and become forever addicted? Would people consider vinegar and baking soda “food” and ban that classic experiment as well?
As far as your comments about having the kids bring in a food from home…I can honestly say that I know parents for whatever reason would not send the kids in with the recommended foods for the experiment. Same for having an exploration of other cultures outside of school…some parents can’t or won’t take their children.
I guess I also see this is this as an issue that my children “consume” many things at school that I don’t always agree with. I can certainly choose to have my children opt out of something if I so choose. For example, if another parent decides a book selection is questionable, I absolutely believe he has the right to opt his kid out of reading it. He doesn’t have the right to decide no one else in the class will read it though. I’m not sure if that makes sense.
As far as your remark about things being a “charged” issue, I’m not sure the answer is to completely eliminate their presence in the classroom. It seems to me that creates a sort of artificial black hole, in the same way one of my kids learned about ancient civilizations with a very purposeful avoidance of the associated religious mythology. Politics and sex education are also charged issues, I personally still think they belong in the classroom though.
Andi says
I would like to argue that a cupcake is more dangerous than a cigarette. The number one killer of men and women is heart disease. One cigarette won’t kill you in the same way one cupcake won’t kill you. It is your personal freedom to do what you desire, even if it has adverse health risks potentially resulting in death. Please don’t do this to my children in school.
I do not understand why anyone would object to removing junk food from our schools. Is it a fear of what that will mean for their own personal freedoms and rights? Is it a worry that their diet will be deemed unhealthy? Junk food ads absolutely no value to education. It can hinder education. Ask a teacher how easy it is to instruct kids after they have eaten a cupcake. Why is this even a debate? Have your cupcakes at your child’s birthday party. Celebrate your kids birthday’s at school with extra recess and singing them a birthday song, kids will be more excited for that extra attention then for a moment of food.
Korey says
I’m not sure I can add anything that hasn’t already been said on this and previous cupcake posts, but I still feel the need to weigh in. My children are in preschool and kindergarten, and expecting them to say no to a cupcake when all their classmates are having one is not only unrealistic, but developmentally inappropriate. By the time they are actually old enough to say no on their own, the habit and expectation of birthday cupcakes will already be firmly entrenched.
I haven’t seen a single compelling reason to include cupcakes and other junk foods in school birthday celebrations. Parents who insist on bringing birthday treats seem to be, at best, reliving fond childhood memories and trying to re-create them for their children, and, at worst, feeling entitled to do whatever they want without any regard for how it impacts other people.
On the other side, I see parents asking that junk food not be a part of school birthday celebrations for a number of reasons that have serious impact on our children, not only now but for the rest of their lives: controlling obesity, avoiding junk food/emotional connections, dealing with allergies and other medical issues, limiting the constant stream of junk food offered to children, providing a nutritional environment that is conducive to learning, and trying to send a consistent message about healthy habits.
When I consider the gravity of those concerns in contrast with the stubborn emotionality of the previous ones, it seems pretty obvious what the right choice is. I’m not sure how anyone can argue otherwise.
Bri says
Amen to the “developmental appropriateness” piece of the puzzle! My five-year-old will tell you unprompted “Cupcakes aren’t good for you, they’re treat foods, but you can still eat them as long as you don’t eat much of them and you eat a lot of healthy foods.” That’s his grasp of the subject. But what does that really mean to him? One cupcake per day (as has happened in his class a few times this year, due to multiple birthdays in a row), as long as he ate the veggies I put in his lunch? How much interpretation do we think a five-year-old can do?
And his baby brother, who’s not quite three? No expectation of self-policing there! We’ve been talking with his school about helping us to put him on a dye-free diet. Just this morning we walked in to discover they were making pink cupcakes from a mix loaded with Red Dye #40 as a “literacy” activity for the day (they read the story “pinkalicious”). Even the teachers admitted there would be nothing gained from trying to convince a 2-year-old that he couldn’t have a cupcake when everybody else did — and I had to stand there and try to figure out what to say about it when I knew the red dye would probably give him stomach upset and nightmares.
Taylor says
I agree that schools should be modeling proper behavior, and that comparing a particular offering in the food line with teachers and parents personally handing out cupcakes to every kid is not fair at all.
I want to mention that the second “key idea”:
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… misses bw1’s point entirely:
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It’s that your notion of “some parents no longer want[ing] their kids eating a cupcake at school every time a classmate has a birthday” is not novel; there have always been parents not wanting that and they’ve always had to deal with it.
The idea that parents like ourselves should have no influence in what parents can bring into the classroom is absurd. Does bw1 think we have no say in bringing soda vending machines in, because it might keep our kids from learning how to say “no?”
Traceh says
I just don’t understand why pro junkers can’t let go of the food. My ideal celebration would be to play games, donate a book or art supplies or something to the classroom and if you MUST give a goodie to every kid in the class, make it something useful and beneficial like a book or a little toy or art kit or something. You’ll spend about the same as you would on the goodie bag with the chocolate, and pencil and other plastic junk that ends up in our landfills. SHARE the day with your child, and come in and play in class. They’ll remember that forever and it will be so much more that YOU are there, not a ooey gooey messy cupcake. Time to create NEW nostalgia.
Dana Woldow says
As a public school parent, the absolute bare minimum I have the right to expect is that the school will do nothing to harm my child. Providing a steady diet of cake and party food harms kids – it hurts their teeth, their waistlines, and their ability to focus and learn.
End of story.
Greta says
This whole thread, and the passionate dad one that preceded it, is fascinating. Put me down as pro cupcake, because the opposition is entirely too strident.
There is a strong sense of self importance running through the anti-cupcake posts here. Parents are saying that they are the only ones–ever–entitled to give their child a treat. Each commentor feels uniquely qualified to judge just what a bad treat is, whether that is because it contains sugar, splenda or red #40. Why so much heavy judgement–a teacher might consume a soft drink at her desk, OMG!! That’s a little hard to take. Yes, we all want to protect our kids from bad things, but no one agrees on what’s bad.
Remember that your kids will grow up pretty much no matter what you do. My kids are in college or just graduated. One kid lives on raw vegetables, fruit, rice and frozen pizza. The other one loves sushi but won’t eat fish, go figure that. Both like the occasional cupcake. Neither is obese, but it wouldn’t be the End of Life As We Know It if they were.
lindtfree says
Greta. . .
And the pro-cupcake group is not strident? The Cupcake Debate seems polarized with few “undecideds” and very little middle ground, except perhaps for suggestions that birthdays could be observed in school on a monthly basis. This sounds reasonable, but why do we need to celebrate birthdays in school at all?
You wrote that “no one agrees on what’s bad.” Although this is correct where specifics are concerned, in a general sense it is false: regular junk food in the classroom is bad indeed.
Personally, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for parents to make decisions about what treats their children receive and how often they receive them. Even if parents aren’t badge-carrying members of the Food Police, some simply don’t want their children to be spoiled brats who expect frequent treats. Are treats still treats when they’re served in school every week?
One issue that has not yet entered the Cupcake Debate is what non-dietary messages it teaches children. When I was a child in the 1970s, birthday treats in school were not the norm, but when they appeared, they were always homemade. In the region where I live, serving homemade treats in school has been prohibited by health regulations at least since the 1990s. By giving official approval only to mass-produced bakery products often laden with trans fats, HFCS, artificial colors, and other chemicals, we are not only giving children unhealthful food but an unhealthful message: namely, that they should trust corporations but not people. While I am not suggesting that this is a conspiracy, the subconscious effect on children may very well be the same. . .
When children grow up, they will do what they want. Until then, they need adults to model good choices, guide them, and gradually give them more responsibility to make their own wise choices.
Kate says
Cake mixes have been around for along time, so I’m sure even an occasional kid in the seventies consumed treats that weren’t homemade.
As far as what messages we take away from the cupcake debate…I think there are many messages being given. Having a debate at reducing the amount of treats out of concerns related to obesity is one thing. Changing the debate so bringing any sort of food into school for any reason because of its perceived danger, or because another parent doesn’t want her kid to have food in the classroom ever…that gives a whole different message to our kids.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Greta: Let me just give my own thoughts here, as I’m sure other readers will share their views, too, and they may be philosophically different from my own.
If you’ve read much of TLT you know that up until a year ago, *I* was still bringing in the cupcakes (or donuts, or whatever). And when it was first made clear to me that this was “the thing to do,” way back in preschool, I thought it was cute and no big deal. I even have pictures of my tiny kids wearing their birthday crown and enjoying the cupcakes I brought in for them and their little friends.
But what has happened to me over time, and I think to many parents in the “anti-cupcake camp” (and, btw, I HATE that term because in the context of my own life and with my kids at home, we are very much PRO-cupcake!), is that you inevitably reach a tipping point. Maybe it’s that day when your kid comes home having eaten a handful of candy from the teacher for correct answers AND a cupcake for one kid’s birthday AND a cookie for another kid’s, because god forbid the two parents could coordinate and bring one thing. And now the brownies you made for a special afterschool treat are starting to seem like a really bad idea. Or maybe it’s the fellow soccer mom who brings Oreos and juice for your kid’s 10am game, when they’ve just had breakfast and will be eating lunch two hours later, and frankly weren’t in need of any “fuel” at all.
I won’t belabor my descriptions of today’s food environment since I lay it out in detail in my posts, but the point is, even the most reasonable, the most sugar-neutral, the most laid-back-NOT-a-food-Nazi parent can reach a point where you just want to scream, ENOUGH ALREADY! STOP feeding my kid ANYTHING unless I’m OK with it!!!
So if you detect any stridency in my posts, that’s where it’s coming from. I adore cupcakes, I relish the pleasure of sharing treats with my kids, the world-as-we-know-it will indeed NOT end if one of them should become overweight. But many parents of school-aged kids these days just feel deluged. And we’re getting very, very tired of it.
Scatteredmom says
I just wanted to add…the point is, it’s not just one cupcake. I once worked in a school where there were cupcakes for every child’s birthday, as well as bake sales. As a result, over 10 months we had treats in the room at the very least every Friday. Top that would food being used as a reward, class parties, hot lunch which was from fast food joints, and the amount of food that kids were being given was outrageous. It wasn’t unusual for a child to have a cupcake at recess, a lunch of greasy cheese covered breadsticks with chocolate milk and ice cream, then hit the bake sale for a can of pop and 3 more cupcakes.
One cupcake on an occasional basis isn’t a problem. The influx of ridiculous amounts of junk food is over the top and should be stopped.
Korey says
Greta says, “Neither [of my children] is obese, but it wouldn’t be the End of Life As We Know It if they were.”
I think this comment is indicative of how passive we’ve become about obesity. It’s so prevalent in our society that we’ve started to see it not only as normal, but inevitable. In fact, it is a major risk factor for a number of serious (and often deadly) diseases that might otherwise be prevented, not to mention social and emotional anguish. So although I would still love my children unconditionally if they become obese, I could not sit back and effectively say, “Oh well, worse things could happen.” This is effectively what we’re doing, though, when we provide kids (some of whom are already obese) with a steady stream of junk food and the corresponding message of complicity in our culture of obesity. Eliminating or reducing the amount of junk foods in schools will not solve the obesity crisis, but it’s one small, proactive step that, in combination with others, can make a real difference.
Lenee says
Good points, Korey. And I completely agree with what you say regarding society’s acceptance of obesity. I’d only like to add that it’s not just obesity that is a problem. I know plenty of people who are not obese but literally live on highly processed junk foods and a steady stream of fast food meals. They’re not obese because maybe they’re not genetically prone to it, or they eat small amounts, etc. But the fact that they are consuming all the chemicals, artificial sweeteners, dyes, preservatives, added hormones, GMOs, HFCS, etc., is ruining their health in other ways.
My son dated a gal who was 23, thin as a rail, and who lived on fast food, chips, cookies, soda and Yoo-Hoos. My son is the complete opposite when it comes to food. This gal may not have been obese, but I can guarantee she was nutritionally depleted and most likely had high levels of toxicity and imbalances in her body from all the frankenfood she was eating.
Just proclaiming that one isn’t obese so all must be well (as Greta did) is wrought with ignorance regarding the dangers of processed and fast foods.
So many good points made here regarding the issue.
Greta says
Lenee, please reread my post. You’ve misunderstood me, which is clear when you said, “Just proclaiming that one isn’t obese so all must be well (as Greta did) is wrought (sic) with ignorance regarding the dangers of processed and fast foods. ”
What I said, and I think this came through judging by some of the responses, is that I would love my kids no matter what their size. I never said that they weren’t fat so they are fine. Frankly, I thought I said enough so everyone would know that their eating habits baffle me. It doesn’t keep them from being good people, kind people, smart people, caring people.
I don’t consider obesity normal or inevitable either, as one responder suggested. What I said is that this group lacks perspective on the issue.
Yes, you might be able to ban classroom treats. But please consider that banning birthday cupcakes in the classroom, by itself, will not solve anything. Yes, you say, it’s just a tiny step in the right direction. BUT it might just alienate enough people who would want to support your other initiatives to improve student wellness (better funding for school meals, more gym teachers, longer recess, …) so that they don’t stand a chance.
Lenee says
I do apologize, Greta. My intent was not to make your comment mean that you are okay as long as your kids are not obese. I did re-read your comment and understand what you are saying. I guess I was responding more to what Korey was referring to, and what I seem to encounter quite often, when people say they are not fat, so they must be healthy. There are so many other factors involved in health, and many don’t realize this. My mistake in lumping you into this group because of one statement made. Again, my apologies. I was speaking in more generalizations, and should not have “pulled’ you into it.
And for the record, my use of the word ‘wrought’ did not need the (sic) you provided. If someone wants to be critical of my use of the English language, I must defend myself if I know the use was intentional and correct under the circumstance. One definition of wrought–elaborated; embellished. Perfectly acceptable in this circumstance. But again, my apologies….
Kate says
Greta, I’d agree that some of the cupcake movement seems to be proceeding in such a way as to alienate would be supporters.
Justin says
I just wanted to say that I’ve been quietly observing this and the original “Cupcake Dad” discussion since taking part in it the other day and I noticed something through all the mudslinging…
Which foods are “bad” vs. “good” is a really a very personal decision–and it should be. What we put in our bodies is entirely up to US, whether someone else agrees with it or not. Some of the readers and commentors here would do well to remember that before personally attacking another person for their beliefs or what they THINK the other person’s knowledge is of the situation.
More to the point, you shouldn’t go around calling someone ill-informed, naive, or any other name simply because they don’t share YOUR view on the subject. For one, you have no idea what their background is or what research they’ve done to come to the conclusions they have on any subject. Who are you to judge them?
We’re all entitled to our own beliefs. If you want to present valid, factual information on why YOU feel a certain way, then that’s good healthy discussion and maybe you’ll change some minds. Calling someone names because you think the person is just too dumb or ill-informed to have come to the same conclusion as you is, quite frankly, offensive in and of itself and not very helpful in the long run.
And yes, I may very well be guilty of this myself and I hope to do better in the future. I’m only human, of course. 😉
Kate says
I agree, and I had the same thought reading some of the comments.
And like you, I’m sure I have also done this.
Bettina Elias Siegel says
Whoa! I’ve been a bad moderator! I was tied up almost all day yesterday and missed a lot of this dialogue. It looks like misunderstandings have been cleared up, etc., which is great, but I’d just like to add my two cents.
Justin wrote: “Which foods are ‘bad’ vs. ‘good’ is a really a very personal decision–and it should be. What we put in our bodies is entirely up to US, whether someone else agrees with it or not.”
He wrote this in the context of people not judging each other in this thread but I think it’s a perfect summation of why I care about treats in the classroom in the first place!
E.g., there are parents who are very concerned about food dyes. I’m more concerned than I was when I first started TLT (I’ve since read and learned more) but it’s still not my “hot-button” issue. My kids don’t get a lot of dyes in their overall diet and it doesn’t seem to affect them when they do eat dye. But isn’t this precisely the point? I could tote a box of bright blue cupcakes to class and feed them to a child whose parents are very much concerned about the issue. It is, as Justin said, a personal matter, and the only way to really respect each other’s views is to keep it all out of the classroom.
And just to Kate’s point that taking treats out of the classroom is too militant and will alienate parents — this is an interesting question. What I’m learning though, is that when parents are told — listen, this is the new rule, please find a non-treat way to celebrate, they DO find an alternative, the kids are just as happy and life goes on. But that said, in my child’s own school, the tradition continues and I’m about to see if I (with some other parents) can change that.
So perhaps I’ll be eating my words. If not my cupcakes. 🙂
Sally says
Thank you, thank you, thank you … that is the point. My kids have sensory issues and I AM concerned about what is going in their bodies and how it affects them throughout the day. I DO want to allow them to have homemade treats at home. And ultimately … I want it to be MY choice.
There are many alternatives to be had that don’t involve FOOD.
And for those people concerned about militance … in my daughter’s classroom there are so many children allergic to many different things. And every one of those kids has to choose to abstain because it is dangerous to their health. And sometimes even to their very life. Just this school year two children have DIED in classrooms across the country due to peanut exposure. If saving children’s lives means militance … I’m all for it. Food in the classroom just isn’t necessary.
Kate says
Bettina, I think much of my concern is how the discussion is taking place. Beyond just simply talking about cupcakes, I think some of the topics about eating better are framed in a way that is alienating. As you probably have guessed I am completely against framing it in a “danger” sort of a message.
As far as parents happily complying with any sort of policy with no comments, maybe that is true in some circumstances…I can think of plenty of non food related issues in our school district where new policies are formed and parents are less than happy.
For the record I am against the use of using rewards in the classroom, even non-food items.
Casey says
“Added sugar in drinks and foods makes up almost 16 percent of the calories U.S. children and teens consume, federal health officials report. That’s far more than the daily recommendation of no more than 15 percent of calories from both sugar and fat, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published online Feb. 29 in the National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief.”
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2012/02/29/us-kids-still-eat-too-much-added-sugar-cdc
When sugar is already out of balance for most kids at home, promoting/consuming additional sugar at school just makes it worse. I don’t know how parents, teachers, and other adults can justify making a bad situation worse when the results hurt children’s health.
Kate says
There is all sorts of risk involved in school and with childhood. Head injuries at recess or during athletic activities. There is a risk of drowning in a swimming unit in PE. Each year in our COUNTY there are probably several high school students that die in automobile accidents. Should we eliminate every possible risk to save a child’s life?
Casey says
It’s called risk management and you weigh the severity of impact with probability of occurrence. We’re starting to become more aware that the negative impacts from childhood obesity and the high probability of occurrence require taking action to turn things around: http://sundaygazettemail.com/News/201202180209
“Five years later, Kearney had chopped the obesity rate of their grade school kids by a stunning 13 percent. Eighty six kids dropped from obese or overweight to normal.” It can be done but how did they convince leadership who “braved the cupcake moms” (and dads, and soda parents and junk food parents)?
Kate says
Casey…my comment was more related to linking the cupcake debate(or any sort of school food) with allergies…and my comment didn’t appear where I wanted it to.
bw1 says
First things first. As to your summary:
” It’s my job — and mine alone — to teach my child to resist the cupcake, and it’s “not the rest of the world’s job to eliminate opportunities [my] kid to sin* against [my] wishes.”
Pretty close: It’s your job to raise your child to comply with your values, beliefs, and wishes. It is not society’s job to eliminate all motivations for him to deviate from your teachings.
It’s ridiculous for me to compare a cupcake to second-hand smoke; only “some new-age anti-sugar parent” could possibly care about an innocuous cupcake.
No. It’s ridiculous NOT because of the theoretical harm each causes. To illustrate, even if we assume for a moment that a single bite of cupcake is unavoidably and immediately lethal, and second hand smoke is merely a momentary annoyance, my point is not changed, because it’s about the question of how difficult it is to avoid. One who is in a room filled with cupcakes can refrain from eating, but one who is in a room filled with second hand smoke cannot refrain from breathing.
As to the footnote:
“* = bw1′s use of “sin” in this context is intriguing. I can assure him/her that my opposition to junk food in schools is neither a religious nor moral crusade, but simply borne out of concern for children’s health.”
As I’ll discuss later in more detail, it is borne out of your BELIEF that cupcakes represent a dire threat to children’s health. That belief is not supported to a degree that raises it ontologically above many religious precepts.
bw1 says
My second response point is that you are conflating state action taken by the school with private citizen action. I am addressing one thing here, the sharing, by a student of treats on his birthday at his family’s sole expense. Junk food in the lunch line, or vending machines, or even sold by school sponsored organizations for fundraising, is a completely different issue. The issue here is your call for the school, as a government agency, to impose your preferences upon the voluntary, at-will interaction of citizens. This is not about a vertical interaction between the school and a student, it’s about a horizontal student/student interaction. No one is commanded by the school to provide a treat on their birthday, and no one is commanded by the school to accept a treat from another student.
Let’s say the school implements your agenda. Treats are banned. A week later, a student celebrating his birthday puts out the word on the playground that he will be commence sharing cupcakes with all comers from his class after school, as soon as he’s 10 feet beyond the edge of the school grounds. What now? Junk Food Interdiction Squads swarming out into the surrounding community? What if the kid in question lives two doors from the school, and he tells his classmates that anyone who knocks on his door after school will be offered a cupcake? SWAT teams serving a no-knock warrant complete with stun grenades, assault rifles, and dogs trained to sniff out buttercream icing? Sounds ridiculous but it’s the logical endgame of your call for the school to regulate non-aggressive student interaction. This is to say nothing of the potential for illicit lunchroom swaps.
When Blatty’s novel “The Exorcist” first came out, I was way too young to be reading it, but a classmate lent me a copy. Should my parents have demanded his expulsion?
bw1 says
Cupcakes doesn’t make kids fat, XBox, Facebook, and DirectTV do. The American diet hasn’t changed much in fifty years – the growth of high fructose corn syrup has been accompanied by the decline of lard, butter, etc. American diets were not appreciably better in 1955, when there were laws to make margarine uncompetitive with butter, than they are now. What has changed is America’s activity level.
I went from 184 to 140 lb. in 30 days, while eating like a teenager whose parents were out of town and left him a credit card, while training for my first triathlon. People three times my weight were amazed at the quantity and poor quality of what I consumed. When they asked how I could lose weight eating like that, I told them – run 6 miles and swim 2 miles.per day.
Worried about the cupcake your kid got? Make him cut the lawn with a push mower. Cupcake nullified.
bw1 says
I’d like to add that I do NOT support junk food in school cafeteria offerings, regardless of whether any parents approve. The cafeteria’s job is to provide kids with sustenance, not recreation or amusement. The category of junk food is characterized less by nutritional content (a hamburger can be a healhy meal) than it is by the motivation for consumption being recreational in nature. As such a subsidized school lunch program offering “fun” food is like someone using their welfare check to buy luxury items. If you want to take my tax money to feed other peoples’ kids, then it’s going to be no-frills basic nutrition.
bw1 says
Regarding the “hardship” of telling your kid to just say no to birthday treats, a friend of mine trained her Rottweilers not to accept food from anyone but her family. I could put a raw steak down in front of those dogs and no matter how much I encouraged them, they wouldn’t touch it until she told them it was OK.
So, how many of you cupcake haters think your first grader can’t meet the same mental standard as a drooling dog?
RUth says
My son’s school allows for one Birthday celebration day a month. I think we’ll survive a cupcake a month!
bw1 says
“Some of the things I did as a kid would NEVER be allowed with my kids.”
Why? Are you currently disabled, without 10 fingers/toes and two eyes? Did you grow up to become an axe murderer or even a burden on society?
“I’m actually surprised I wasn’t raped, molested, run over by a car, drooped 12 feet from a hay loft, cut myself on a turbine, gotten bit by a rattle snake, started smoking, doing drugs.”
WHY? Are you saying you buy into the fear mongering of the current nannystate? What is surprising about your childhood conforming to the vast statistical majority of your peers?
“Our country’s idea of parenting has changed drastically in the past 20, 30, 40, 50 years. ”
Yes, to our society’s overall detriment. Parenting these days means impregnating a woman and skipping town. It means having the government feed,clothe,shelter, and indoctrinate your kids. Parenting today is something 14 year olds do. So, are you implying that the modern idea of parenting represents an improvement?
“If you’re nostalgic, why not argue for teachers spanking your kids in class like they used to? Or for standing with your nose in the corner. ”
I’m not the least bit nostalgic (in fact, I detest cupcakes, both personally and as a blight on our culinary culture) but I’m all for both the measures you mention.
“I am curious if bw1 has school-age children…”
It doesn’t matter – I WAS a school age child, whose parents raised so peer pressure was a null term in my decision calculus. Neither they, nor I, came from the planet Krypton, or Mount Olympus. I am sick and tired of the learned helplessness that dominates this leftist whining with cries of “but we CAN’T manage to do what other ordinary people have done – we need Big Brother to do it for us.”
bw1 says
” What frustrated me about bw1′s insistence that resisting the cupcake is no different than kids resisting non-kosher foods is that those foods are generally not brought into school and distributed to every kid in the class. ”
They were in MY school. To many in my former neighborhood, kosher means way more than no pork; it essentially means no food from any source other the kitchen of a known observant member of one’s own religious community. I watched many childhood friends turn down birthday treats for this reason
“We are not talking about resisting peer pressure, we are talking about resisting ADULT pressure, in an environment that is supposed to be safe.”
No, we’re not. You’re again conflating school action with student peer action. Birthday treats are obtained, brought in, and distributed by STUDENTS. If anyone has evidence of teachers pushing students to accept such treats, then I’d be surprised, and supportive of suing the school in that INDIVIDUAL circumstance.
“I am so, so tired of the “just say no” argument. We don’t expect the same kind of self-control in kids that we do in adults”
And so, on the eve of their 18th birthday, 100% of adult self control will be bestowed by a fairy godmother? Self control is learned in a gradual process, and if your first grader hasn’t learned not to take candy from strangers, which isn’t much different from not taking cupcakes from others when the parents have prohibited it, then you should be home-schooling them because they should NEVER be out of your sight.
“But the assumption that kids should have mastered it by school-age is more than a little silly”
That assertion is a LOT silly in the face of the empirical evidence – MANY of my classmates had the level of control in question, and NONE of them was named Clark Kent or Peter Parker.
What floors me about this is all these assertions that your kids couldn’t possibly achieve what was commonplace for me and my friends at that age. Look, I’m not a war hero, nor a billionaire – I’m a rather ordinary guy who manages to pay his bills, and set a little aside for a rainy day. If you believe your kid is so profoundly unable to clear the same bar I did, to what sort of life are you relegating him
“I still would like to find some kind of middle ground with classroom treats, ”
Here’s a simple one – BUTT OUT – if a kid wants to share something with his classmates, or he doesn’t, leave it be. If they want to accept, or decline the offer, leave it be. It’s called liberty, and it’s the reason this nation exists.
“Institutions of learning are not daycare facilities, and are not responsible for providing a free birthday party venue at taxpayer’s expense.”
Who said anything about a party at taxpayer expense? The birthday kid’s family bears all expense, and I never saw a teacher interrupt of otherwise supersede instructional activity for treat distribution. It was always done after the dismissal bell, which means anyone who wanted to decline could leave, and didn’t have to see all those sticky fingers.
Casey says
So by your logic if Honey Boo Boo’s mom decides to bring “go-go” juice (red bull mixed with Mountain Dew) and pageant crack (pixie sticks) to class to celebrate and uses her own money, the only thing other parents can do is hope their children are trained like pit bulls to “just say no,” homeschool, or send them to a private school. I disagree and think responsible parents need to speak up for stronger wellness policies that make a healthier school food environment for all children. Children are being indoctrinated at school into the culture of overeating and teachers are part of this too when they use food as a reward.
It is not just the parents who are bringing in the treats. Teachers at my daughters’ schools passed out cupcakes recently to celebrate Dr. Suess’s birthday and they provided classroom treats for birthday kids whose parents can’t afford to bring in cupcakes. Parents are blamed for childhood obesity but also blamed when they speak up for changing things that make their job harder.
Casey says
P.S. This is not happening after the dismissal bell but during the school day.
bw1 says
Casey, first of all, what teachers at your daughter’s school are doing is neither relevant, nor something I’ve defended. Nor is the use of food as a reward. Nor is taking time from instruction for treat sharing. As I understand it, this entire blog is devoted to nutritional issues faced by parents of school age children, but this PARTICULAR POST and its comment thread regard voluntary, student initiated and funded sharing of treats. PERIOD.
There are TWO SEPARATE issues here – school actions, and peer actions. You are ignoring the fact that there are other considerations besides your fixation on the evils of sugar. We (assuming you’re in the USA) live in a nation founded on the principle that government is not the be-all, end-all solution to every problem, and must be constrained in what it may do for and to us. When the school/teacher, as what constitutional law calls a state actor, offers kids junk food, that is something the government is doing TO us. When the school/teacher, again as a state actor, stops a fellow student from offering your kid a cupcake, that is the government doing something TO that fellow student, FOR you.
What are we talking about here, in the most generic sense, but your frustration that someone else is subjecting your kid to temptations and influences you’d rather he not face? This is nothing new – from evolution to sex education to pro-union, statist political views, to prayer in the classroom, to dress codes, this is the trade-off and fatal flaw of public schools.
You say “Children are being indoctrinated at school into the culture of overeating.” The religious conservative says “Children are being indoctrinated at school into the culture of secular humanism. The feminist says “Children are being indoctrinated at school into the culture of the patriarchal homophobia.” People for the American Way says “Children are being indoctrinated at school into the culture of repressive Christianity.” The NRA says “Children are being indoctrinated at school into the culture of guns are evil.” The litany goes on and on. There’s always this tug-of-war about the values that the public schools will advocate, but in a society with any concept of freedom of conscience, the public schools have NO place advocating ANY values. They have a duty to be totally neutral on such issues.
On the other hand, your child’s classmates have no such restrictions. The freaky Scientologist can tell your kid we all about how e-meters cure everything. The kid who goes hunting with his Dad can gross out the child of the PETA leader with lurid tales of gutting a deer. And yes, the kid whose Mom brings home giant pixie sticks from a weekend of shallow carousing in Vegas can offer one of them to the child of the organic-legume-stewing earth-mother. See, what you really want the school to do is shelter your kid from the diversity of the marketplace of ideas.
Oh no, you say, you respect freedom. Except for when it comes to cupcakes. That’s the problem – EVERYBODY wants to carve our their exception when it’s their ox being gored, and that’s how we decend into serfdom. Freedom is messy, and everybody’s ox gets gored sooner or later, but it’s better than the alternative.
YES, if you have a problem with that, then, in a free country, your options are teaching your children to resist temptation, private school, or home schooling. The same goes if you’re vegan and your idea of the worst thing ever is for your child to trade his PB&J for a classmate’s turkey sandwich, or if you’re a Muslim and you don’t want your teen to get his hormones worked up over girls exposing their faces and hair, or if you’re a collectivist hippy and you don’t want your kid learning that property rights create prosperity. I’m sorry if it’s such a burden to take more responsibility for the kids you brought into the world, but life is like that – no free lunches. Exposure to more pluralism, dietary or otherwise, in the general population is the price you pay for Big Brother relieving you of some of your responsibilities at, I might add, the coerced expense of others. Your problem is not with cupcakes, but with the entire concept of public schools, which necessitate relinquishing some control in exchange for certain benefits (although I don’t see them as particularly beneficial.
If you’re still having trouble grasping all this, I suggest you take a stab at answering the question I asked in one of my first comments. Let’s say your child’s school bans birthday treats. One week later, your child’s classmate puts out the word during recess that he will be passing out birthday cupcakes to all comers from his class on the sidewalk 10 feet past the school grounds boundary. Alternatively, this classmate lives two doors from the school and he makes it known that after school, any member of his class who knocks on his front door will be given a cupcake in commemoration of his birthday. What then?
I suppose you’d also like your community to ban trick or treating because you can’t bear to tell your little dear no. When I was a kid, we had an elderly lady on our street who pretty much made every day Halloween – knock on her door to say hello, and she’d give you a piece of candy. I’m sure you’d find a nice cold, dark cell in the gulag for her, eh, comrade?
By the way, parents are the real root of childhood obesity – American diets haven’t changed that much in 50 years, but their activity levels have. Last time I checked, schools weren’t buying kids XBoxes and Playstations.
Sofia Horvath says
I just read this today, thought the tie-in to the idea of today’s food environment to that of the food environment in which many of us were raised was interesting. Loved this analogy:
“Cultural norms have to change to keep pace with environmental change, or they become very silly very fast. Imagine if you grew up in southern California, and your family lived there for generations. It might well be that you, and all members of your family, went to school every day wearing shorts and a T-shirt. If you relocate to North Dakota, do you think this “tradition” will be kind to your kid on a typical day in January? Change in the food environment is no less a justification for modifying our behavior.”
Taken from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/diets_b_1358147.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications
bw1 says
So, Sofia, do you think North Dakota should make it a felony to wear shorts and t-shirts in January? Ultimately, that is the question – are we vassals of government subject to “re-education” when those in power decide that change is necessary?
How would Bettina and others here feel if the flipside to your wishes were to be implemented – MANDATORY cupcake consumption? That, not the allowance of voluntary food transactions, is the pro-birthday-treat equivalent of your position.
I followed a link to this post, but I’ve since perused more of this blog. Bettina seems a little surprised in this thread at taking flak from libertarians, but she deserves far more of it. There’s a consistent theme here not only about eating healthier, but about the government MAKING people eat healthier. From what I’ve seen, it’s another case of single-issue fascism. The problem is, with each group of single-issue fascists promoting the growth of government on their pet issue, the net result is full-on fascism.
Sofia says
bw1- Good question. I don’t know about felony, but I am pretty sure that if a kid consistently show up to school in shorts and a tshirt in January (in North Dakota), authorities of some sort would get involved. Child Protective Services, perhaps? All in the name of keeping that child safe and healthy.
bw1 says
So, in other words, your answer to my second question is yes.
If a kid CONSISTENTLY shows up in January in t-shirt and shorts, without losing body parts to frostbite, then it stands to reason that the kid is being kept safe and healthy, just not by the prescriptive methods demanded by the busybodies in the nannystate. I had a classmate in college from North Platte, Nebraska who had not owned a winter coat since the age of ten, because he was comfortable in just a shirt. Of course, in the procrustean bed of the nannystate, there can be no allowance for individual differences.
You should all worry less about your kids getting fat and worry more about them being unable to make a decision for their own good without a government authority figure to dictate it to them.